Dancing in the Dust Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Dancing in the Dust Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 29, 2024

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Film Movement's release of The Early Films of Asghar Farhadi.

Asghar Farhadi became a member of a rather exclusive club in Academy Awards history when The Salesman won for Best International Feature Film, becoming the second film by Farhadi (after A Separation) to be so feted. Only a few other legendary names like Vittorio de Sica, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini have been able to shepherd more than one of their films to that honor (which is officially bestowed upon the country of origin, even if it's tradition for the director to receive it at the ceremony). This double feature from Film Movement's Film Movement Classics imprint offers Farhadi's first two features as writer and director (he had previously co-written a feature called Low Heights which is not yet in our database), and for those who have seen either A Separation or The Salesman, this duo probably unsurprisingly explores some of the same ideas and themes of Farhadi's later work, and they both certainly provide an absolutely visceral (if at times downright disturbing) view of contemporary Iranian culture.

While some supposedly "official" definitions of dowry explicitly state it refers only to a bride's contribution to a marriage (sometimes at the behest of her father), in the case of Dancing in the Dust, it actually affects a husband attempting to recompense his estranged wife once their marriage disintegrates in the wake of the groom's parents' disapproval. That disapproval is not actually with regard to the bride as such, but more so with regard to her mother, who is alleged to have worked as a sex worker. The fact that all of this melodrama is revealed in a whirlwind opening set of vignettes after the very first few minutes of the film have already quickly documented the meeting and then marriage of Nazar (Yousef Khodaparast) and Rayhaneh (Baran Kosari) may indicate how unusual Farhadi's narrative technique is in this film, but that may be because he wanted to save some emphasis for what is one of the more bizarre left turns in second act history.

After all of the aforementioned drama involving the young couple and the dissolution of the marriage, Nazar is left with a debt owed to Rayhaneh, which in fact is explicitly called a dowry in the subtitles. In a truly bizarre figurative and literal detour, Nazar hides out in the back of a dilapidated van owned by a character known only as the Old Man (Faramarz Gharibian), who makes whatever hardscrabble living he is able to by traveling to the Iranian equivalent of the Outback in order to wrangle snakes, which he then delivers to a local lab for venom extraction. If you had that on your "plot dynamics Bingo card", you're a better prognosticator than I am, to be sure.

What then plays out between Nazar and the Old Man is an unabashedly gonzo back and forth that plays almost like an Iranian bus and truck Waiting for Godot, with two characters stuck in a hellish landscape sparring both verbally and actually physically at times. These weird scenes are interspersed with Nazar's pretty active fantasy and/or memory life, as he envisions Rayhaneh. Suffice it to say Nazar's snake wrangling skills may not be as agile as the Old Man's, leading to a somewhat calamitous series of events.

As Roxana Hadadi points out in a featurette included on this disc, both Nazar and the Old Man are in fact prisoners of a kind, and in the Old Man's case, maybe the actual kind, and it's arguable that all of the characters in this story, which includes brief moments for the parents (both films in this set offers scenes with mothers' faces awash in tears), are prisoners in their own way. Despite the glut of this tale taking place in the barren but still wide open Iranian wilderness, there's a stifling feeling of claustrophobia suffusing things. As both the on disc supplement and insert booklet allude to, this is a film rife with symbolism and arguable allegorical content, but it also serves as a completely remarkable social realist document of the strictures imposed on people by Iranian customs.

Dancing in the Dust Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dancing in the Dust is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Film Movement Classics, an imprint of Film Movement, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Film Movement tends not to provide a ton of technical information about their transfers, and there's only a "new 2K restoration" offered on some of the packaging of this release. This is an appealingly organic looking presentation with a rather pronounced grain field at times, especially in some of the barren desert material. Occasional variances in color temperature can be spotted, with some passing moments that can be a little on the brown side, something perhaps exacerbated by the very colors emphasized in the desert sequences. On the whole, though, the palette is very nicely suffused and actually rather vivid at times, especially with regard to some of the bright colors on outfits that are worn. Detail levels are generally precise throughout, though a few scenes when Nazar is hiding out in the van are slightly hobbled by an absence of light.

Dancing in the Dust Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dancing in the Dust features a nice sounding LPCM 2.0 Mono track in the original Persian. While there is some consistent background hiss and noise discernable, it never seriously distracts from a nicely rendered track that supports both a really evocative score which includes some haunting wordless vocals, and some ambient environmental effects, especially in the desert sequences. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Dancing in the Dust Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Hearts and Snakes (HD; 18:32) is an appealing visual essay by Roxana Hadadi, which explores some of the film's themes within the overall context of Farhadi's oeuvre.


• Dancing in the Dust Trailer (HD; 1:57)

Dancing in the Dust Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"Nothing is private here", a cleric kind of dismissively tells the young couple as things begin to fall apart, and that "Big Brother is watching" ambience hovers over this film, even when it becomes a veritable "two hander" in the desert. Technical merits are generally solid, and the supplementary visual essay very appealing. Recommended.